Earlier this week, I launched a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator. I hesitate to describe it as a ‘game’ – it’s really only a proof-of-concept of one, temporarily living on the web. But people are enjoying it! You can play it through to the point where you engage in your own inevitable destruction, here: I Read more

I said last week that I wanted to get a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator -my weird-fiction-influenced narrative crafting semi-idlegame experiment -up on the web as soon as poss. I’ve got a hundred and fourteen tasks on my pre-alpha list, and I’ve finished seventy-eight of them. I’d like to reach alpha by Friday, but realistically I Read more

This is devlog zero for Cultist Simulator. It’s not an announcement or anything: it won’t get any press cos everyone’s off at Develop, and, man, I don’t want press on the screenie below anyway. But I should talk out my ideas in public, and this is something to link to next time I need to explain Read more

Just before I left Failbetter, our editor, who’d been a long-time freelancer before she joined Failbetter, cautioned me about the freelancer’s disease. “You will,” she said, “end up with more work than you can comfortably handle, because you’ll worry about the future. It’ll happen. Don’t try to stop it, just prepare for it.” I’m trying hard Read more

Q. is the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation a good thing? A. Yes. Q. How good? A. Really pretty good. Better than @rikergoogling or a Boulevardier, not as good as fusion power or Half-Life 3. Q. Why? To quote Emily Short: ‘this may sound rather dull and legal, but it is in fact very important’. In this post I want Read more

I feel like I’ve spent most of this week – like the rest of my Twitter bubble – gawping incredulously at the collapse of the British political landscape into a sort of sinkhole of xenophobic narcissism. If you need a roundup, Michael Gove has one for you below. APART from that: I’ve been in Vancouver, Read more

I’m at Pocket Gamer Connect Vancouver, and out of long Failbetter habit I was dutifully going to write up a blog post about it; and about the experience of being an indie at a mobile games conference; how much it’s like being a pine marten or some other small twitchy hyper animal in an old growth Read more

” For an indie dev, your community is essential. They’re your evangelists, your early warning system, your Baker Street Irregulars, your Praetorian Guard…. but you have to look beyond them, too.” I’ve got a feature in GamesIndustry.biz, about things we did right and things I’d do differently: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-06-24-failbetter-games-seven-years-ten-lessons

This is the first time I’ve been out of full time employment in seven years. I meant to relax and do nothing. It turns out that when you’ve been occasionally starving and always busy for seven years, relaxing and doing nothing is like expecting an earthworm to lie still. I just keep rippling, involuntarily-wise. At Read more

Earlier this week, [a carefully unspecified number of] players completed the Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name quest line, an epic and long-awaited storyline in Fallen London which ends with the player character’s deliberate self-destruction. You can read more about Mr Eaten here (me talking about it) and here (someone else talking about it). I’ve generally avoided giving Read more